You suddenly realise how dumb you have been up till now, and vow to change it. You repeat this every year from then till eighty.
It depends on the amount of discipline you put in. Middle adulthood is full of social demands. Those require time.
What is your priority? What do you want? Then you go from there.
Normally if you have learned from your experiences you would have acquired sufficient knowledge, not of others but of yourself, enough to really define what you want for yourself.
I think that intellegence either goes one of two ways ....1, people either become stuck in their ways and will no longer learn because they buy choice ( become stuck in their ways) and when they do this they start to think they know everything...and if you coose not to become stuck in your ways youll still be able to grow and learn so it goes to say you either stop learning or you continue to want to learn the decision is ours too make ...
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.